The instant invention relates to a cassette for storing paper sheets to be fed seriatim therefrom, and more particularly to such a cassette capable of storing paper sheets of two different lengths therein.
The transfer paper for transfer type copying devices, and the photosensitive paper used in electrofax systems, as well as the printing paper used in simple printers are considered as cut sheets. It is common practice to automatically feed such sheets by positioning them in a cassette and then loading the cassette into the unit. Some of the prior art cassettes include free floating corner separators which exert a downward pressure on the stack of sheets being fed equal only to their own weight, and a bottom plate which can be spring biased upwardly against a feed roller so that the top sheet of the stack of sheets is always fed from the same height. An example of the foregoing type of cassette can be found in U.S. Pat. No. 3,919,972, issued Nov. 18, 1975.
With prior art cassettes, whenever it is desired to provide a machine such as a photocopier with more than one size paper, a number of cassettes corresponding to the number of different sized sheets employed must be used. The instant invention overcomes this problem by providing a cassette which includes the latest advance of free floating corner separators and an upwardly biased bottom plate and which can accommodate two different lengths of paper. The obvious advantage of the instant invention is that when a machine operator desires to change the size of the paper, it is only necessary to remove the cassette, turn it upside down, and re-insert the cassette in the machine.